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Down & Dirty

On April 6, 2006, Mother Jones published an article entitled “Another Massachusetts Miracle?” which offered a favorable analysis of the just-passed bipartisan “universal” health reform bill, Chapter 58. In it, the author asserted that “the head of the Massachusetts group that has promoted the main single-payer alternative to this approach called it ‘an important, meaningful step forward.’” Being the chair of Mass-Care at the time, I naturally paused for a few minutes of introspection. Then I wrote a letter of clarification to the editor. The writer had confused me with the head of another group, one that had stopped supporting single-payer years before, in the era of the Clinton managed competition gambit. With Governor Shumlin’s shift, it’s not surprising that that policy person who praised the insurance industry boondoggle of 2006 praised the governor’s betrayal now, declaring it the result of “legitimate political considerations.” What is surprising is the assertion by Don McCanne in his daily blog Quote of the Day that that analyst “has long been in the trenches with single payer. He knows what he is talking about.” Not true. We know that the healthcare marketplace is the enemy of healthcare justice, and so we will continue our campaign